Freeze during AutoSave

It is not common.  At least it has never happened to me.

See the Knowledge Base article "How to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word 2010, Word 2007, Word 2003, or Word 2002" at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/921541?p=1

-- Hope this helps.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP,
dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org
Posted via the Community Bridge

"BillyPe" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

I have only had Microsoft Office 2010 for a week but 3 times already while I am using Word and the AutoSave tries to save, the program freezes and I have to shut down the program. When I reopen the program, all the AutoSaves are gone and all information from the point of my last manual save is lost. It is driving me crazy and I was wondering if this is common at all or if there is something I can do to fix it.

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

This is definitely not an isolated problem, as I have experienced it as well. The documents I seem to have the most problems with are object rich. I include several Equation objects as I am processing my Calculus homework, but also include Drawing objects for graphs. This may have something to do with the irregularity of the issue.

Although I am not a MS Engineer (of any kind) I will say the lack of recovery data is not at all surprising, since it freezes during the process of creating the file, there is no file for it to reference when attempting to recover. The other problem I am having is that if I allow the "fix this issue" or any other kind of graceful close of Word, when I attempt to reopen my last save it tells me that it is currently only available to My Username, this makes absolutely no sense.

I had this happen 3 times tonight while working on a plain text document with minimal graphics. The problem you describe with the program telling you it is currently only available to your username is called a Data Lock. Essentially, the program thinks the document is still open and won't let two users try to change it at the same time. The surefire way to clear the data lock is a reboot. Unfortunately, with Word hung, Windows 7 won't reboot correctly either and it takes a hard power down to get it to happen for me.

As to the lost changes, I thought that was the case until I started poking around. Instead of prompting you with the last autosave, Word 10 just quietly tucks it away and you have to dig for it. After opening the document, click the "File" tab and look through the "versions" of the document on the bottom left for the most recent autosave. Your manual save may still be more recent.

A bad workaround is simply to turn off the autosave. Part of my pay is based on turnaround time on the documents I work on, so I can't afford to be constantly rebooting and recovering where I was in the document. A better solution for me is to turn off the autosave since that is what is crashing the program. I can work through it that way, but I'm wondering if Microsoft would back me down to a more stable Office 7 until they figure out this program killer.

That was finally the solution I came up with too. Ever since I turned off autosave I have had no problems. I just save the document a lot more often than I used to save.

My daughter has this problem and the only solutions offered by microsoft appear to be:

1. Turn off Auto Save - she has done this and it is working so far - 18 hours. This does sound like an incomplete solution and almost an acceptance of a software bug that needs to be fixed. I would like to know if there is a download that can fix this bug.
2. The standard re install solution. I question whether this is just a bit of a fob off.

Any help would be appreciated

There is no autosave in Word - only automatic saving of recovery information. This recovery information is used in the even of a crash. If the program is hanging when the 'autosave' activates then of course there is no save taking place to recover the data when Word restarts. You need to identify the cause of the crash, which is likely to be corruption in one of the user setup files or registry seehttp://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm then http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm or http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541

Reinstalling rarely achieves anything useful as the core program is rarely the cause of the problem.

<mmahoney60> wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

My daughter has this problem and the only solutions offered by microsoft appear to be:

 1.. Turn off Auto Save - she has done this and it is working so far - 18 hours. This does sound like an incomplete solution and almost an acceptance of a software bug that needs to be fixed. I would like to know if there is a download that can fix this bug.
 2.. The standard re install solution. I question whether this is just a bit of a fob off.
Any help would be appreciated

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
www.gmayor.com
Posted via the Communities Bridge
http://communitybridge.codeplex.com/

I had the same problem using Word 2010 on windows 7, but it seemed to have stopped and started again. I do want to say that I was working on a document for a significant portion of my night with "autosave" working just fine when it decided to freeze. I was unable to shut down my computer and after force shutdown and re-opening word none of the previous autosaved files were on record either. I understand that the file it was saving during the issue would not be there, but I would expect the other files to be, and they were not. Also, to comment about word not having an autosave function, and needing to identify the cause of the crash ... the cause of the crash is clear, it is AUTOSAVE. I have reinstalled word and continue to have the same problem. When the "autosave" bar shows up at the bottom of the screen, word hangs and then is stuck. It seems pretty clear to me what the cause is. 

Hey, I know this question is really old but I just have to post this somewhere.  I just had a problem with this too where I almost lost 4+ hours of work.  I know I should have saved but w/e.  Luckily I went to the AppData/Office/Word and found the corrupt recover.  Right clicked and went to properties and changed it to open from Microsoft Shell or some bull to Microsoft Word.  Worked wonder, got essay back... boss.

This issue still happens to me, has there been a solution found besides turning off the feature?  It happens to me in BOTH Word and Excel.

If I manually save faster than the auto-save it won't hang, but if I pause long enough for Autosave to kick in, I'll hang.  Sometimes I can recover, if I wait long enough, like 10+ minutes, other times it's frozen until I restart the app.  This is VERY frustrating and a waste of time and a loss of work.

Yes, BetaSki's description is very accurate.  Same problem with me.  My Word crashes regularly several times a day and has done for over a year.  The problem is that it is a very large document with lots of graphics.  This is absolutely a bug in the memory management.  Microsoft needs to get rid of the bug and improve the recovery feature.  Ironically, it is a catch-22 glitch in the very feature that is supposed to protect against data/work loss.  In the hierarchy of bugs, I was always taught that bugs that result in data loss are the very highest priority.  I hope Microsoft will learn to see things this way.